Hello everyone! This is just a reminder to keep Sunday, April 30th from 2-4 pm free so you can join us for our Jen@Joe reception. Join fellow friends of jen bekman and Joe, The Art of Coffee for socializing and refreshments at the Joe location on 13th between University Place and Fifth Avenue.

Hope to see you there!

How exciting! Page 14 of the April 26, 2006 edition of the New York Sun featured photos of the SVA Mentors dinner. And who is right smack in the middle? Ms. Bekman herself! The dinner which was held af the The Modern (the restaurant in MoMA) was hosted by Stephen Frailey, the SVA Photography Dept. Chair AND a Hey, Hot Shot! panelist.

Painting by Agnes Barley

When I mentioned to Jen a few weeks back that I was working on a presentation about the artist Agnes Martin for one of my classes, she pointed out an interesting parallel to one of our very own jen bekman artists: Agnes Barley.

Barley’s most recent show at jen bekman was back in the fall of 2004 and featured painted works on paper.

The coincidence that Jen pointed out, however, is that not only was Agnes Barley influenced by Martin, she was actually named after her too (her full name is Agnes Martin Barley)!

With My Back to the World (1 of 6), Agnes Martin

People often made comparisons to landscape in Agnes Martin’s work, mostly because she spent the majority of her life in the desert of New Mexico. Her paintings and pencil drawn grids are meant to evoke feelings of beauty and happiness that one experiences when looking at nature but abstractly. Similarly Barley’s work explored inter-structural and intra-structural linear relationships while creating a sense of horizon and space metaphorically through her use of line.

For more information on Agnes (Martin) Barley check out her profile on the jen bekman site.

Nicholas Fevelo Lobster Liberation

As mentioned a few weeks back, Jen has been acting as a mentor for the SVA Mentors program in its photography department. We posted some work by Jen’s mentee Nicholas Fevelo, BUT I failed to tell you more about the program and where you can see the work in person!

Taken from the SVA Mentors site:

SVA established the Mentors program in 1992 to introduce new talent to the New York City arts community. Stephen Frailey, chair of the BFA Photography Department and curator of the exhibition, says, “Students at SVA learn from professionals on a daily basis, but Mentors goes even further. This is a unique opportunity to take their work to a new level and reach a new audience. In a sense, students know the city is watching, and it shows.”

The Mentors show, including Nick’s work, will be on view at the SVA Gallery (located at 601 West 26 Street, 15th floor) until April 29th. For more information check out the SVA Mentors site.

Addie Juell Manifest Destiny

Alright New York, I understand it’s mighty icky outside today, but if you could, I know you would all be at jen bekman keeping me company and checking out Addie Juell’s pretty photographs.

With that in mind. . . if you haven’t made a stop at 6 Spring Street lately you might want to because Addie’s show, The Way It Is, will only be up for another week! It went way too fast, I must say.

Addie Juell The Garden

For an interesting post about Addie’s work and why you really should see it in person check out Addie Juell: Closer is Better from the jen bekman news blog archive. And remember The Way It Is is only on view through April 29th!

My apologies to all you dedicated readers of the jen bekman news blog – my student duties got the best of me this week. However, there is good news! The end is in sight and I am ready and willing to keep you updated with lots of posts!

First thing, you may or may not be aware of the new
Hey, Hot Shot! blog which is being edited by my lovely co-intern Anna Wolfgang. Anna will be keeping fans of the competition informed about its going-ons, especially now that the deadline is quickly approaching! Make sure you check it often! Also check out Anna’s post about Hey, Hot Shot! being featured as one of the 7 best photo competitions to enter today as rated by Photojojo.

The other bit of info I wanted to tell you about is the party we are throwing to celebrate Jen@Joe. On April 30th @ Joe on 13th St from 2-4pm, jen bekman and Joe, The Art of Coffee will be having a reception to celebrate our joint venture so please come join us! Save the Date! To read more about Jen@Joe check out my first blog post.

More blogging soon!

Photography from Tema Stauffer

jen bekman artists Ben Donaldson and Tema Stauffer are included in the April edition of Group Show! Group Show is a monthly online gallery featuring the work of 24 emerging and established photographers.

Also included in the April Group Show is Casey Kelbaugh. Kelbaugh is a photographer known for founding a great project for the arts/photography community called Slideluck Potshow.

For those unfamiliar with the event, Slideluck Potshow is a slideshow and a potluck to which members of NYC’s arts, photography, and media communities bring food, drink and slides. The evening begins with a couple hours of dining on the home-cooked delights of participants, while drinking and mingling. Following the potluck everyone gathers to watch the slideshow of participants work. The location changes with every event and the next is yet to be determined. Each event has a particular theme and submissions follow a deadline so if you are interested make sure you check the Slideluck Potshow website as more details become available.

Some good news. . . . Blueeyes Magazine, the online documentary photography magazine devoted to publishing new long-term project work, recently relaunched after a year absence.

Issue number 11 is now available via the Blueeyes website, and features work by Toshiki Senoue and Allison V. Smith

Blueeyes was created in 2003, by a group of friends from the Missouri School of Journalism in response to declining editorial space for documentary images. They write on the stie “Blueeyes is a movement against negative trends in photojournalism that have limited the freedom, self-expression, and evolution of documentary photography as a young medium of mass communication. The magazine strives to publish longer, more personal, and more intricate bodies of work, in direct contrast to the traditional models of the newspaper photo story or the over-simplified, stereotypical coverage of broadcast journalism outlets. While many publications, both in print and online, are happy to regurgitate the same pictures from the same photographers ad nauseam, we are trying to champion unpublished and unheralded work from mainly younger photographers. All of this is in a simple effort to understand our selves and our world more clearly.”

Bruce Grant, Fearful Symmetry # 2

Well-known photographer and critic Bruce Grant, who received an honorable mention for the Winter ‘06 Edition of Hey, Hot Shot! at jen bekman, will lead an open Postive Focus critique at Safe-T-Gallery at 111 Front St. in DUMBO, Brooklyn on April 11th at 7 pm.

Positive Focus was founded to provide a Brooklyn community of emerging photo-artists with a supportive environment for artistic development, youth education and community outreach services. So if you are not already a member, this is a great opportunity to check it out (i.e. bring work and they might critique it if there is time).

Here is a little clip of what nyc.photobloggers.org contributor, Tim O’Connor had to say about Grant’s work:

Bruce Grant’s pictures have an unforced grace that comes very close to feeling casual. You suspect they might be fun to take. His subjects – mostly ordinary objects and patterns encountered on long walks through his native Philadelphia – are familiar to any American urban dweller. But you have not seen doors and air conditioners, signs and telephone poles, walls and chainlink fences like these before.

If you’re interested in seeing more of Bruce Grant’s work, check out his fotolog and Flickr pages. You can also find the complete post about this event on nyc.photobloggers.org here.

Nicholas Fevelo Lobster Liberation

A very nice young man came into the gallery on Friday. His name is Nicholas Fevelo and he also happens to be an aspiring photographer AND Jen’s Mentee for the SVA Mentoring program. We had the chance to look at his senior thesis projects entitled Lobster Liberation and Gifts: Responses to Found Flowers.

Nick, who hails from Staten Island, based his photography around the idea of gift giving. I really wish you could have seen the movie he put together documenting his attempt to give away flowers (yes, that’s right, free flowers) to people on the street. It’s amazing how genuinely surprised New Yorkers can be to random acts of kindness.

Nick writes in his statement: “in a tradition of art as a gift, this work employs flowers, seeds and lobsters to question the motivations behind the nature of gift giving. The photographs document interventions while blending photography, sculpture and performance calling attention to photography’s relationship to the former two.”

We asked Nick to send us some images so that readers of the jen bekman blog could see all his hard work. Lobster Liberation is a photographic narrative which Nick describes as “a reminder that freedom comes in many capacities. “ In Liberation he plays “fate changer” and pokes fun at conceptual art practice by “returning two lobsters to the sea by moonlight.”

 

For those of you who are heading south some time soon, jen bekman artist Holly Lynton is participating in a group show at Rocket-Projects in Miami called THE SOCIAL BODY, opening this Saturday April 8th.

Here is the description:
“This exhibition explores the common disparity between the classical
and conceptual uses for the body and its actual use in everyday life.
The body has typically been isolated and idealized through art,
whether to provide a model for representational scale and beauty, or
to show how the body belongs to the person, as do all of the
significations attached to it. Useful as both of these approaches may
be, they also push us away from any comprehension of how the body
exists as a means of social expression. In most cases, we cannot help
but contribute to the context of social expression which the body
controls. From an early age, we are made superconscious of the type of
body that we have, how we perceive its merits and its shortcomings,
and how others perceive them as well. The disparity between one manner
of perception and the latter fills in many of the gaps of early
socialization. Bodies have a language all of their own, which may be a
product of ethnic or sexual identity, a response to the population in
which we move, and to a sense of our innate self-worth.”

Sounds like an interesting show! Holly’s work at jen bekman has included many self portraits shot at very close range and explore events in her day to day life. For images of Holly’s work check here.

I can’t believe Jen@Joe has been up for almost a month! Wow, it really seems like yesterday I was standing at Kinkos laminating the Jen@Joe informational materials. . . So for those of you curious as to how things are going so far, here is a little update for you!

Everyone at jen bekman is extremely excited with the progress at Jen@Joe. We love how everything looks, we love that Joe patrons keep taking postcards, and we especially love getting inquiries about Hey, Hot Shot! and the various photographs currently on view.

But how do the lovely people at Joe feel about it? Well I decided to contact Jonathan Rubinstein, the owner of Joe, to find out and here is what he had to say:

“The responses have been amazing – it seems like every other customer takes a postcard or asks a question. I think its going so well! It has made our place so much more interesting and definitely spread the word about both jen bekman and these specific artists. All in all, it seems to be a win-win. “

As if that weren’t good enough, Joe was recently voted “Best Coffeeshop in Town” by TimeOutNY! Congratulations Jonathan!
Jen@Joe can be found at Joe, The Art of Coffee located on 13th St. between, 5th Avenue and University Place. For more information regarding the photographs on view at Jen@Joe email sales@jenbekman.com

“One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.” ~Frank O’Hara, Mediations in an Emergency

Jen has a bit of a thing for Frank O’Hara. She admires Frank O’Hara so much, the name for her blog Personism was inspired by one of his poems (you can read all about it, in Personism’s first post).

It seems only fitting therefore, that the next show at jen bekman will be a group show inspired by one of O’ Hara’s poems: Meditations in an Emergency.

Since the show is still a bit of a ways off, this is just an introduction to it all. To be honest, it’s really more of an introduction to O’Hara and the poem itself (something to ponder while the show is coming together). Lucky for me, I’ve been exposed to his work a fair amount for one of my current classes.

Personally, Frank O’Hara is what I call a muser. Musers (my own word) are people who write (essays, novels, poems etc.) where you read their words but feel as though you are listening to them speak. You can hear their “musings.” You read their thoughts but can hear their voice. You can easily identify with what they say. They are often simple yet provocative in what they discuss. You often find them easily quotable and if you’re like me, have the strong desire to copy/paste a quotation someplace associated with you where others might see it.

Meditations in an Emergency is a prose poem, which makes it a good choice as inspiration for a show. The artists who have been asked to participate do not need to worry about being literary interpreters because the poem is written in plain language. They have been asked to read the poem and find a piece of it that connects with them.

Everyone can find a bit of this poem to connect to. I have my favorite part, what’s yours?

More information about “Meditations in an Emergency,” a group show at jen bekman, to follow!

David Byrne, Individual Pictures

Jen says she has spring fever. Because of spring fever, she spent a good portion of yesterday afternoon reading blogs and chatting with Horacio Salinas who stopped by the gallery.

She also became obsessed with looking up information on well-known musicians who make art. While I personally would love to be more productive on a Friday (spring fever, unfortunately, has the effect of making me want to clean and organize) this is an interesting topic. How many musicians can you think of that also make art?

A Wild Night – paper cutout by Jad Fair

I suggested Yoko Ono. Jen came up with Mark Mothersbaugh, Jad Fair (who has shown work here a few times, most recently at Pin-UPstairs @ Fanelli), David Byrne, Laurie Anderson and Bjork (while yes, she is married to Matthew Barney, I don’t know if she makes art of her own or just likes to wear “interesting” clothing). I really thought it would be easier to come up with more examples. Aren’t people deemed “creative” generally talented in more than one creative area? I think this is true at least of most people I know.

There have to be more musician/artists . . . maybe if I wasn’t so consumed with wanting to organize everything, I might be more helpful.

Chiaroscuro -n. pl. chi·a·ro·scu·ros

1. The technique of using light and shade in pictorial representation.


2. The arrangement of light and dark elements in a pictorial work of art.

I’ve had this photo sitting on my desktop for a little over a week. I “borrowed” it from Addie’s personal pictures of her opening.

I love art with high contrast. Extreme shadows juxtaposed against extreme light sources make me happy in an odd, but satisfying way. This picture of the gallery at night is a good example – I’m just a little sad I didn’t take it myself.